Chiesa di San Martino

Stick your hand into the lion’s mouth by the door, and say something nice about your neighbours: maybe that will help atone for all the dangerous rumours spread through the years via this bocca di leoni (the mouth of the lion of San Marco). Venetians were encouraged to slip anonymous denunciations of their neighbours through these slots, reporting unholy acts ranging from cursing (forgivable) to Freemasonry (punishable by death) for investigation by Venice’s dread security service, the Council of Ten. The theme of persecution continues indoors with Palma Il Giovane’s canvases of Jesus being flogged and on the way to Calvary, which are hung almost out of sight in the choir stalls but can be glimpsed in front of the altar. But the namesake saint, St Martin of Tours (AD 316–97), was actually the first Christian saint to die a natural death and not as a martyr – he was a Hungarian priest who experienced a conversion experience after serving the Roman army in Gaul (France). Sansovino designed the present church in 1654, with the present facade in Istrian marble added much later in 1897.